


As Onward, Silently, Stars Aloft

by perilit



Series: Brimming May [4]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:29:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27491959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perilit/pseuds/perilit
Summary: "If you want to kill Dutch Van Der Linde,Arthur muses with a hollow pang,then you kill Hosea Matthews first."In the aftermath of the Saint Denis bank robbery, Arthur, Dutch, and the others manage to escape Saint Denis  - but not without consequences.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan & Dutch van der Linde, Hosea Matthews & Arthur Morgan, Hosea Matthews/Dutch van der Linde
Series: Brimming May [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1982324
Comments: 8
Kudos: 46





	As Onward, Silently, Stars Aloft

**Author's Note:**

> A re-write of the Saint Denis robbery showing Dutch's grief, because we got cheated by R* and I'm still mad about it.
> 
> I listened to Now At Last by Feist on repeat while writing the majority of this. Pair it with this for maximum pain.

_As onward silently stars aloft,_  
_eastward new ones upward stole,_  
_Vigil final for you, brave boy,_

It had been doomed from the start, really.

They’d ridden into Saint Denis, the fine black suit jacket uncomfortable against Arthur’s skin. Of all of the clothes he’d had to wear over the years for cons, every costume, and suit, nothing ever felt as right as the thin, washed-out cotton of his shirts.

  
Hosea’s distraction had been reminiscent of the man himself: showy and so much larger than life. Folks scattered at the noise, and Arthur tried to swallow down the anxiety in his gut, tried to tamp down the voice in his head.

It was almost too easy to get into the bank. 

The bank manager was trembling, but the door opened soon enough, and the vault hadn’t been too hard to crack. Arthur’s anxiety had started to fade, started to feel like _maybe_ , just maybe, Dutch’s bluster about _one last score_ might’ve been true after all.

And then, John’s voice was cutting through the din in his head, shouting about trouble, and all of Arthur’s hope vanished. 

Milton’s grating voice was yelling for Dutch, Hosea’s fine blue jacket fisted in his greedy hand and the barrel of his gun pointed at the man’s head. Dutch -- Arthur watched as the lines around Dutch’s eyes tightened at the sight of Hosea -- was rambling, something about America, sounding like every speech Arthur had ever had to sit through over the years. 

Milton releases Hosea, pushing the older man forward, and for a moment, Arthur has a glimmer of hope.

Hosea turns in the street-

Milton fires.

And then, Hosea, _oh god, Hosea_ , is crumpling, a strangled cry coming from his lips, and Arthur can’t breathe because _Hosea_ \--- Hosea has _blood_ on his jacket, that same jacket he’d heard Dutch waxing poetry over that morning when they thought no one was around. 

Hosea collapses onto his side on the cobblestone, his body contorting unnaturally.

The air leaves Arthur’s lungs as Hosea’s body falls slack.

Dutch breathes out Hosea’s name, his voice strained like he doesn’t believe what just happened. Arthur’s not so sure he’d believe it either if Hosea’s cooling body weren’t in front of him through the window. 

Dutch’s brow furrows, his eyes hardening into stone, and his voice is filled with more rage than Arthur can remember hearing in a long time. Arthur loses himself in the motion of shooting, letting the recoil of his gun and the noise of a fight numb him.

A stick of dynamite later, and they’re fleeing through a hole blasted in the bank wall, and Arthur spurs Cadell faster than he’s ever asked the horse to run. He murmurs soft apologies to the gelding beneath the pop of his gunfire, twisted in the saddle to shoot over his shoulder. They split off around Scarlett Meadows, when the noise of the fight has stopped following them and Arthur no longer feels the need to glance over his shoulder between every breath.

  
Dutch’s face is pulled tight with what Arthur distantly figures must be grief. He feels it too, in the dull hollows of his stomach - the pain there is more than just hunger.

 _Hosea_. _All those years._

Dutch slows The Count to a trot, Arthur pulling up beside him. 

“Dutch?” he says carefully. The older man is just as likely to lash out as anything else right now.

Dutch just sighs, running a hand over his face. “I….we need to split up, right now. I’ll meet you back at camp in a day or so, son.”

There’s unease simmering in Arthur’s gut. He remembers all too well the months he and Hosea had spent patching up Dutch after Annabelle, the lines the older man has carved into his skin under his shirt and trousers.

“Stay safe.” It comes out less steady than he’d intended.

Dutch’s face softens a fraction. 

“I will try, Arthur.”

  
Arthur gives Charles a meaningful look after his shoulder and heads off towards the Heartlands, Taima’s body visible in his peripheral.

They ride in silence for ten minutes before he pulls Cadell off the trail, motioning to Charles to do the same. 

“I’m going to stay with Dutch. I need your help tracking him.” 

Arthur winces internally at how rough his voice sounds. 

Charles just nods, accepting Arthur’s grief in the quiet way he does most things. “Shouldn’t let him off on his own right now. Not after Hosea.”

Arthur’s chest burns at the reminder, and he shoves it away. There will be time enough to grieve, later. There’s a fraction of his grief mirrored in the other man’s face, and he’s reminded, not for the first time, of how many lives Hosea touched.

  
It takes both of them to find Dutch. 

They’ve been running with a hell of a lot more people for long enough that Arthur forgets how good at hiding Dutch is. It makes sense - Dutch ran on his own for a while, and even after he joined Hosea, they did a lot more lying low, from what he’d heard. Dutch hasn’t lived this long out of sheer luck alone.

They find The Count hidden in a thicket, and Arthur gives Charles a grateful look, pulling Cadell up next to the white arabian. 

The other man just nods, reaching over to briefly pat Arthur’s shoulder in a rare display of affection. “I’ll meet you back at camp in a few days,” he murmurs. Taima stomps impatiently in the brush, and Dutch’s voice rings out.

“Who’s there?”

Arthur takes a deep breath and starts towards the tent pitched in the dense tree-cover.

  
“It’s me,” he calls.

“Arthur.” Dutch’s voice comes, sharp and flat.

Arthur winces. 

“Are you trying to get us killed?” Dutch hisses, stepping out of his tent.

His hat is gone, his hair beginning to slip free of pomade the way it does when he’s been running his hands through it.

“Ain’t no one here to see us, Dutch. Took both Charles and me to find you.” Arthur placates, keeping his voice calm. Anger is flitting through his veins, but the last thing either of them needs is another fight.

Dutch settles a bit, lifting a hand to his face. His hands, Arthur realizes, are shaking. 

“Why are you here, son?” Dutch asks tiredly. 

Arthur swallows. “Was, uh...was worried, ‘bout you, Dutch.” 

“I’m fine, Arthur.” It’s flat. Both of them catch how Dutch’s voice shakes on the last syllable. 

Dutch swallows and crosses his arms. 

_You ain’t,_ Arthur wants to argue. Dutch’s body is trembling faintly where he stands. There’s no point in arguing right now, though. The older man is clamped tighter than a steel trap, despite how the cracks are beginning to show.

He misses Hosea even more fiercely, right now. _Hosea_ would know what to do, would know how to coax the tangled mess of Dutch’s mind into the open air. Arthur feels like a kid again in comparison, floundering in shallow water.

Dutch is watching him warily despite the clear exhaustion on his face. 

Arthur holds out his hands in front of him in surrender. “I ain’t here to fight, Dutch. Ain’t here to ask anything of you, either. Just...worried.” 

The older man clenches his jaw. “I’m _fine_ , Arthur.” He gestures to the tiny camp. “But by all means, make yourself at home, since you came all this way.” The sarcasm is thick in his voice.

Arthur blows a breath out of his nose, frustrated, but turns, heading towards Cadell anyway. 

He may as well set up camp.

  
The sky darkens steadily above his tent. Dutch had disappeared back into his tent after Arthur had begun setting up his bedroll and had not reappeared since. Arthur had resigned himself to waiting, for now, halfheartedly chewing on some jerky before settling down on his bedroll with his journal in his lap. It’d be almost perfect, were it not for the circumstances. 

The light from his lantern casts a comforting yellow glow on his journal pages. There’s half a bottle of whiskey in his stomach, just enough to make the edges of the world less sharp. Though, maybe it’s a little closer to most of the bottle of whiskey. Just enough to almost, almost forget about Hosea.

 _Hosea_. 

Arthur’s breath hitches, and he presses the heels of his palms against his eyes.

“C’mon, Morgan, not now,” he mutters darkly. 

There’ll be time to mourn later. He’s had an ear cocked towards Dutch’s tent all evening, but aside from the strike of matches, the older man has stayed silent all night. He has half a mind to storm into the tent and press Dutch until he cracks, but there’s a good chance that’d only get him thrown out. 

The whiskey in his stomach and the spinning in his head are tugging him towards sleep, and at least if he’s asleep, maybe he won’t have to think about _Hosea_ , so Arthur puts out the lantern, curling up on his side and staring at the canvas wall until exhaustion drags him under.

Arthur wakes with a painful tug in his bladder. 

He stumbles out to the treeline and relieves himself sleepily, tucking himself back in his pants in the thick dark. 

There’s a stuttered inhale suddenly, from near the tents, and Arthur fumbles for his Cattleman, holding his breath. He curses when he feels only air, remembering that he’d stashed his gun under his pillow.

Another broken inhale cuts through the stillness, this one sounding suspiciously like a sob.

There’s no one else around for miles. Normally, Arthur would know better than to think Dutch might be crying.

But...of all of the things Arthur has learned over the years, none have stuck in his brain so solidly as this: if you want to hurt Dutch Van Der Linde, then you hurt Hosea Matthews first. 

Dutch can brush off knife swipes and punches, has gritted his teeth through bullets and broken bones. On one memorable occasion, Arthur witnessed him limping back into camp with three cracked ribs and a bullet in his leg. 

When Hosea gets hurt, though?

A few years after they’d let Arthur start joining them on jobs, Hosea had caught a bullet in his arm. The older man had kept on shooting, albeit with a grimace. Dutch, on the older hand, went pale like _he_ was the one who’d been shot, sticking close to Hosea for the rest of the shootout and then fussing in a way Arthur had never seen him do for anyone else. Hosea had let it happen, though not without teasing Dutch the entire time. Arthur ended up doing most of the bandaging when Dutch’s hands were shaking too badly to wrap the dressing. 

_If you want to kill Dutch Van Der Linde,_ Arthur muses with a hollow pang, _then you kill Hosea Matthews first._

Arthur’s only seen Dutch truly broken once before, right after they’d lost Annabelle. He’d walked into the man’s tent without announcing himself, stopping dead in his tracks at the sight of Dutch hunched over on himself, tears dripping from his jaw and his straight razor gripped in his hand. 

Arthur was gone before Dutch could realize he’d been there.

He’d gone to get Hosea, and the older man had sent him away, white-faced, before disappearing into Dutch’s tent for the night.

Hosea explained it to him gently the next day.

“Sometimes, Dutch gets... _unnerved_. He just gets stuck in that head of his, sometimes. He...well you know he’s been hurtin’. Hell, we all have.”

Arthur had nodded somberly.

Hosea sighed.

“He’s stuck in his head and he feels guilty, and he thought that...hurtin’ himself was the best way to deal with it. Arthur, look at me, son.”

Arthur had almost recoiled at the seriousness in Hosea’s eyes.

“Don’t _you_ get any ideas from him, now. That...it ain’t the right way to solve things, and it ain’t gonna stop you from hurtin’. It’s _not_.”

Arthur had nodded, ducking his head anxiously. “Okay, Hosea.”

Hosea’s face had softened then, pulling Arthur close to him. “I know you know better, my boy. I just...well, call it an old man being paranoid.”

They’d stayed pressed together for a long moment, Arthur breaking the silence to whisper into Hosea’s vest.

“Is Dutch gonna be okay?”

“I hope so, Arthur. Losing someone...well, it does things to people. We’ll keep an eye on him, maybe drag him out to go fishing in a few days.”

Hosea paused.

“Best you stay away from him, when he’s like that, though. He doesn’t like to be seen as…” Hosea had paused, rolling the word around in his mouth. “...weak.”

“He’s not, though,” Arthur had argued, confused. 

Hosea had laughed, softly, the corners of his eyes crinkling like they did when he was particularly fond. “I know, my boy. But he doesn’t see it like that, despite me trying my best to pound it into that thick skull of his. Just promise me you’ll leave him be.”

Arthur had promised, and after that, even after they’d picked up Miss Grimshaw and John and a mess of others, it became commonplace to grab Hosea from whatever he was doing with a word or a glance, and the older man would go to Dutch, the two disappearing for an hour, or sometimes the whole day. 

Hosea had been slower to go to Dutch, after Blackwater.

  
Arthur’s close to Dutch’s tent now. 

Hosea’s words are rattling around in his head. _Promise me you’ll leave him be_. 

But Hosea isn’t here. 

It’s just Arthur.

  
Arthur knocks once on the tent post. The ragged exhales quiet immediately, and a revolver clicks.

Dutch looks as terrifying now as he did all those years ago. 

His face is flushed, tears clumped in his eyelashes, but his mouth is twisted in an ugly snarl, the revolver still poised in his hand. Even in grief, Dutch is intimidating. He meets Arthur’s gaze steadily, and despite what should be a pitiful sight - Dutch’s lips trembling at the edges, his eyes still wet - Arthur has to fight not to look away. 

Dutch breaks first, and maybe that's what should scare Arthur the most, because Dutch never, _ever_ breaks eye contact first. 

Dutch flicks the safety on the gun and brings a hand up to scrub angrily at his face. 

“Go away, Arthur.”

There’s no heat behind the words. He just sounds tired.

Arthur swallows past the nervousness in his throat. “All due respect, Dutch,” he says quietly, “I think you could stand to not be alone tonight.”

Dutch is silent for a long moment. Long enough that Arthur starts to get nervous, debates just turning around and trying to forget this ever happened.

Suddenly, Dutch gestures for Arthur to sit. His free hand is trembling, the other still curled loosely around his revolver. 

Arthur blows out a breath, sitting loosely on the bedroll.

He holds out his hand for Dutch’s gun. 

Dutch laughs humorlessly through his nose, his eyes going even sadder. He drops the gun in Arthur’s hand, his fingers resting on top of the engraved metal and brushing Arthur’s palm. 

“You’re acting like- him.” His voice is thick.

“Someone’s got to,” Arthur says, gently, setting the gun down on his other side. Dutch’s hand falls to the bedroll.

Dutch drags in a breath, fumbles in his pocket for a cigar. His hands are shaking too much to light it. He swears quietly, a tear slipping down his cheek unbidden. 

The match snaps in his fingers.

Arthur’s throat burns. It feels too real, now. If he had any doubts about what had happened, he can’t hold onto them now, not with Dutch unfolding in front of him.

He takes the matchbox from Dutch. His hands are shaking too, sweaty from the anxiety of watching Dutch’s grief and his own inevitable collapse, but they’re steadier. He lifts the flame to the end of the cigar. 

Dutch’s eyes flit to him, and then to the cigar.

He doesn’t lift it to his mouth, just watches the paper burn down slowly. Arthur too, watches, mesmerized by the way the light dances in the quiet stillness as Dutch’s hand trembles.

Another tear slips down Dutch’s cheek, turning into a steady drip that darkens his union suit. He doesn’t move his eyes from the flame, doesn’t even seem to register he’s crying. He simply stares at the cigar as it burns to ash slowly in front of him, more still than Arthur has ever seen him. 

In the sharp shadow of the cigar light, Dutch Van Der Linde, for the first time in his life, looks small.

  
Arthur blinks away the moisture in his own eyes, putting a heavy hand on Dutch’s shoulder. 

_We’ll be okay,_ he wants to say,

_It’ll be alright._

Dutch blows out the flame as it reaches his fingertips, letting the ash fall to their feet.

  
Hosea is dead, and all the words in Arthur’s throat have gone with him.

_I could not save you, swift was your death;_  
_I faithfully loved you and cared for you living,_  
_I think we shall surely meet again._


End file.
